


Bones

by WhenIFindLoveAgain



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Anal Sex, Anorexia, Art, Artists, Cancer, Car Sex, Character Study, Drama, Drama & Romance, Eating Disorders, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Drama, First Love, Friendship/Love, Gay Sex, Growing Up, Love, Love Confessions, Love Triangles, Love/Hate, Lung Cancer, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Music, Nervousness, Oral Sex, Photography, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Sex, Sex Toys, Shower Sex, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Underage Sex, Unrequited Love, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24532390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIFindLoveAgain/pseuds/WhenIFindLoveAgain
Summary: Xu Minghao hates his body and develops an eating disorder while he involves into a relationship with model photographer Wen Junhui who achieves more by 16 than anyone else in the world had, and, yet, non of their world knew. The story onwards involving the culture and drama of youth, love, sex, and growing up. A deep-focus work
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Wen Jun Hui | Jun, Wen Jun Hui | Jun/Xu Ming Hao | The8, Xu Ming Hao | The8/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Bones

**Author's Note:**

> This is a deep-focus work, and I'm a deep-focus naturalistic writer, but, as I get no reads on my original work, I transformed it into a SEVENTEEN work. This book doesn't have chapters; it is just one big long work, marred with "///" as reference points. Hope you enjoy; tell me what you think x  
> Hit me up on Instagram at @theartoftootimingyou

Minghao was sick of people telling him he was too thin. He had always been fairly thin. That was his body. Wiry, wasn't that what the Brits called it? Wiry...dogs were wiry. But that was their hair, wasn't it? So if people were descrbing him was "wiry" nearly to the point of a nickname...were they saying he was a dog? 

Minghao hated school. He couldn't be more in love with hating it; hating the girls, hating the boys, hating the lessons, hating the teachers. To Minghao, every part of it was utterly fake. No one understood anything, knew nothing, aspired nothing, constructed nothing - and this what was school was all about. Education. Education of shit for the shit breeding the shit. 

I don't want you're body, I don't want you're body, I don't want you're body, I don't want you're body, I don't want your body, I don't want you're body, I don't want you're body

Hot, disgusting, un-resolveable shame burned up inside of Minghao. He wanted to punch something, punch him, punch himself, curl up in on himself from the shame flooding his body and die. 

I can't believe you left me for her, Minghao remembered of his ex, having been at a club recently and seeing his ex-boyfriend with his brand new girlfriend...and all of her dumb, acne covered, thickly made-up, leather and denim wearing friends...smelled disgusting, looked disgusting, were disgusting. You left purity for that - cheap and disgusting and virile...

Our love has gone cold, Minghao remembered thinking of saying to his ex.

"Who the fuck is that cunt?" The sharp words of his boyfriend's woman's male friend rang sharp and horrific in Minghao's head.

You're intertwining your soul with somebody else, the thoughts went back to thoughts of talking to his ex.

Minghao threw up on the side of the road, having had to get out of his car. He had been driving down through the countryside to his Grandparent's home. Cows in a near-by field wandered over to see him. A calf blinked huge, dark brown infant eyes from between it's Mother and Aunt's legs. Poor little thing, having to see this, Minghao thought. He put his hand through the fence and the calf came iver to him. The calf's dark brown fur was soft, and she nudged her nose into Minghao's palm. Minghao glanced up to see if the mother cow would kick him in the head but they didn't see too bothered by the presence of the human being.  
///  
Minghao didn't want to eat. He just wanted Junhui.

It was three months since he had broken up with his ex, and then Minghao had seen him in a club with his new girlfriend and her dumb, fake, stupid friends. It was eight months since Junhui had come into Minghao's life. For the first five months, Minghao had known and had seen Junhui about through school, and through Junhui working part-time as Minghao's Father's studios. Minghao's Father owned a lot of commercial property, and let out old fisherman cottages in the old Industrial estate by the river to young artists who had enough money to pay weekly rent with growing their dope in their "herb plantation boxes", selling their bodies to other hipsters, and painting nude, pornographic portraits. Junhui used one of the artist's spaces as a studio for photographing and filming dancers. It was a very desirable and very economical thing; unbeknowest to the school or any of the other students, Junhui could make between £700-£1200 a week. Minghao met him outside of school due to cleaning. Minghao polished the floorboards, cleaned the windows, vacumned the carpets and cleaned out the bathrooms for his Father every Saturday evening. 

Junhui had been alright, Junhui had been cool, but, at that time, Minghao was still with his ex and didn't have eyes for anyone else. It wasn't because he was utterly in love with his ex, but, the two of them were together. Minghao couldn't quite describe it, not even in thoughts to himself, but no human being on Earth could be touched like that and not be afflicted to a bond to that person who had afflicted them first.

Junhui usually photographer girls. Not just girls; female ballerinas. All of whom he was fairly good friends with.

Minghao had just done some vacumming one evening when he went to sleep on a Scandinavian Art-Deco chaise-lounge that belonged to a Danish traveller artist, a Danish girl with dark-yellow hair and a wide flat face that was still remarkably pretty despite first thoughts at the description. Junhui had taken photographs of him without Minghao noticing, and, when it was half-nine of the clock, Junhui had woken Minghao up. "You've got a thigh-gap bigger than most of my girls." Junhui told him with a grin, the Dixon 356 camera dangling on a belt from around his neck. A slowed down version of "Orange Juice" by Melanie Martinez played in the background. At that time, Minghao hadn't understood the English song lyrics.

"Are they clementines?" Minghao pointed to Junhui's studio space, white petaled blooms with dark, dusty pink tips scattered across the ground.

"With Soyeon was in earlier she was dancing part of "The Lady of Camellias" but down at the florist she didn't have any Camellias in so I'm counting on the fuckhead population who sees my work not being learned enough to tell that they are clementines not camellias." Junhui explained. Minghao cracked a grin that became wider.

"Bloody hell, I've got some bad news for you."

"Hm?" Junhui sat down on the edge of the chaise-lounge beside Minghao, his hips by the middle of Minghao's tights, his clasped hands hanging between his knees. Minghao thought that looked quite masculine without it being fake and over-bearing. Junhui gazed at Minghao attentively; the look of that look made Minghao lose his place for a few moments.

"I think you might be just like me." Minghao chuckled, and then he began to laugh as Junhui did too.

"Isn't it so nice?" Junhui said.

"Jun?"

"That we're nothing like the rest of the cunts." Junhui replied. "People write 400-page essays of people like us - wanting us, needing us, unable to be without us - and then when we turn up in real life, oh, no, we're freaks or something." He smiled brightly. "There'll never be enough of us. But this is why people like you and me run the world and everyone is just a pathetic pig on the floor chewing blue anti-psychosis tablets because they're too weak to acomplish anything other than a mental breakdown over shit because they're just sulking."

Minghao felt the breath leave his lungs. Junhui laid down on the chaise-lounge beside him. There was just enough room, but it was tight. What that moment had felt like...that's what it had been like for the last three months. But, for Minghao, it had grown stronger and stronger, until he could barely cope with it.

He wanted to look good for Junhui. Because, otherwise, why would Junhui want him? Minghao knew that if Junhui looked like him, he wouldn't want him. Minghao hung out at the studios every day after school. He didn't care if it upset the other pathetic hipsters that the landlord's son was hanging about. Junhui had had a go at one of them recently, telling him he was a pussy after making comments about the "scanty leotards" of Junhui's ballerina's. The said hipster had cried until Junhui had rolled his eyes with a scoff and had given him a slap and told him to grow the fuck up.

"You're so amazing." Minghao had breathed in complete and utter awe to Junhui later that one particular evening, an arm around Junhui's shoulders and a hand on Junhui's other un-captured shoulder. Junhui had laughed and had thanked him, insisting that it hadn't be a problem, the "dicks" had to be told. Minghao's hand had left Junhui's shoulder for a moment before clasping back down on it. "Capture you." Minghao murmured in Junhui's ear.

"Can you do that tomorrow?" Junhui asked. "Do that with one of the girls?"

So, Minghao had. Junhui had filmed. One of the ballerina girls - astonishingly pretty - had sat up on the moved Scandinavian Art-Deco chaise lounge and Minghao had lenght his elbows against the curved back. They had both gazed into the camera for a moment, before Minghao had hissed playfully and had grabbed the ballerina who had laughed happily, making it look like it was a comedically messed up double's shot.

Capture you.

It was one of Junhui's most sucessful shots with over 15,000 likes on social media and so many work offers. Yet, none of the dickheads at the school knew, and could not even begin to understand.

"They can't hand the truth." Junhui remarked of it one day, sharing a cigarette with Minghao on the back steps of the studios, overlooking the dirty grey river beneath a equally dirty grey sky. The cigarette was ordinairy, a tobacco one mixed with the usual tarmac and rat poison, not marijuana. Minghao leant his head against Junhui's shoulder in a gesture for a few moments before pulling back and saying to him, "I really like you."

"Well, that's good, 'cause I really like you, too." Junhui responded.

"No, Jun, I mean that I really like you." Minghao said, thinking deep down inside that he shouldn't have said it like that in the first place because of course Junhui would give an answer like that because Junhui would think - 

"Let me kiss you?" Junhui asked after he exhaled a lungful of smoke in a smooth, thin stream through his lips, the smoke going from a smooth, small rhythm to losing it's order and dissipating in the air above their heads and around their faces, all broken and mattered up, at one with the oxygen.

Minghao nearly passed out from the shock, his stomach knotted violently. Oh, God, fucking shit, my breathe will kill him, Minghao thought. It's like fucking mustard gas

But Junhui didn't seem to mind when his lips pressed over Minghao's in a single, chaste kiss. Minghao expected more. Junhui to do more.

"You and I both know you're not ready for a proper pash." Junhui told Minghao wisely.

This time, Minghao really did fall over. Junhui didn't seem to notice as he went back to smoke his cigarette, Minghao's upper half in the studios, and his lower half sticking out. Unbeknowest to Minghao, Junhui took the long time to stare down intently at Minghao's crotch. Junhui leant forward, his lips parted, a few times, just imagining without undoing the out-of-it Minghao's jeans.

One the last time, Junhui did pressed his nose to Minghao's crotch, and got the slightest smell of Minghao through his very clean body. Junhui couldn't quite believe that Minghao and his abdomen got hit with such a blood-rush from a single kiss. Junhui's fingertips un-did the zip of Minghao's trousers, and, from the tiny section of exposed black underwear of Minghao's, his length beneath, Junhui mouthed over it, cigarette still held in one hand. Junhui inhaled some of the smoke, and when he was done with it, exhaled it over Minghao's clothed length as he mouthed over it again, getting a sense of Minghao. Junhui could feel the arching curve, the sharpness of that curve, of Minghao's hip-bones. It both fascinated and alleviated him; Junhui had never seen that in a man before, at any age. The girls were different, well, because they were girls, were they not? The complexities of the human body changed between gender naturalistically, no matter the human races's perception of indentified gender and sexuality. Men still looked different, moved different, felt different, thought different, to girls. Different homones, different size, different characteristics. Some things were just male, and some things were just female. But Minghao's hip-bones tantalizing disrupted that earthly naturalism of undeniable and accepted realism for a few moments. 

"Bones are my favourite things." Junhui murmured down to him.

Things had been different since then. It was like a new version of reality. Like the wheel had been reinvented.

And Minghao was terrified of falling asleep at it, or doing something to make Junhui to twist it, and make them crash into a tree, mother earth, the nurture and the experience of all.

The taste of vomit in Minghao's mouth in his memory burned him.  
///  
"I felt the strangest emotion but for once it wasn't hate..." Minghao confessed. Junhui had asked if Minghao could...could he photograph him again? Minghao sat cross-legged on the floor with his knees half raised, loose and comfortable and natural, his arms wrapped loosely around his knees. Junhui had taken to the habit of always photographing Minghao in monochrome. Junhui explained it had more style, and seeing as Minghao had style, wasn't that just the best enhancement? Minghao had told Junhui off at the time, saying that was too gay; he had felt embarrassed by Junhui's words, even though Junhui meant only well. Junhui forgave him; in all honesty, Minghao's harsh words didn't bother him in the slightest. 

"Mate, I've been helping girls stand up on their toes for the last twelve seasons, I'm well-practiced." Junhui had replied. Minghao had laughed. Junhui's testament to his personal experience of life, and his understanding of it's perception of all and everything.

"Is there somebody who can love you?" Junhui asked, twisting the focus dial around on the lens.

Minghao stopped breathing, the blood stopped rushing in his veins, and his heart stopped beating.

"What?"

The flesh of the camera went on, and, in the time of a gun-shot, Minghao was blinded. But, then, there was Junhui, smiling at him, happy as could possibly be.

"Sorry for saying something crap like that, I just had to get your face just right." Junhui explained, a genuine note of apology to his tone. Minghao nodded slowly and slightly. Those words had been a shock to him. In the back of his head, "Because I refuse to anymore. I won't do it" were Junhui's un-said words.

Shut up, you're overthinking it, a wise, but bitter voice, spat in a telling-off in the back of Minghao's head. Minghao distantly thought, remembering the "Misconduct marks" they were handed at school. "Three misconduct marks" was a trip to the princple's office. And the way that the prefect's said it..."Take a misconduct mark, Xu Ming Hao."

"Why don't you fuck your arse with it, you skinny bitch?" Minghao had quipped to one of the prefects one day. That had got him suspended for a week, but his Father thought it was hilarious, so, it was ok. Like sunshine on a granite stone...that was how Minghao thought of his Dad. He had a heart made of stone but his wife's sunshine - Minghao's Mother - was always on his back so he was kept warm.

Minghao smiled softly. The flash of Junhui's camera went off again.

"What are you thinking of?" He asked. Minghao told him. There was no point in not telling him. That was perfectly ok.

Junhui, after a few more moments, came and showed Minghao the photos he had taken. Minghao's stomach dropped. He looked absolutely disgusting. Was that actually his face? He hadn't looked so bad in the mirror in the bathroom this morning when he was just getting out of the shower. Minghao felt sick to his stomach. He was revolting, and so fat. His face was absolutely digusting, it was beyond deplorable. His cheeks were so fat that when he smiled, his eyes just disappeared...Minghao never wanted to eat again. He just wanted to be able to lose ten kilograms overnight. How disgusting he was. How absolutely fucking revolting that man was recorded on the camera lens...

No way, you have to delete that, Minghao wanted to say to Junhui. I look disgusting. But, disturbingly, there was something about his repulsive state, his fatness, that made him fascinated, interested. That was how the rest of the world saw him...every second, of every single day.

Minghao could taste that morning's rice in his mouth still. He hated it. He hated everything. Subconciously his fingertips touched his face. He heard Junhui chuckle distantly, and Minghao nearly self-combusted as Junhui kissed his other cheek. "Boy, you're so fine." Junhui laughed.

Then why are you laughing, freak? You're so sick, laughing and saying I'm beautiful when you've just capture for you and me and the rest of the world how fucking revolting I am, a hideous and wild voice screamed at Junhui in Minghao's head. All the while Minghao sat there very quietly as Junhui's mouth pressed against his cheek again, this time, higher up on his cheekbone, and his hand went through Minghao's mullet hair-cut.  
///  
The not-eating-thing wasn't going very well for Minghao. He drank heaps of water, and it worked. Apart from one small problem. Having to constantly piss. It was ridiculous. Minghao couldn't stop this feeling that he was going to wear his penis and his other insides out, keep doing this.

One thing Minghao really wanted to do was have sex with Junhui. In all honesty, he just really wanted some sex. Really needed some sex. And it was seven months, nearly eight, since they had first met. Minghao really needed Junhui. Minghao really needed Junhui's body.

But he was still fat and repulsuve and awful. Why would Junhui want to work on that body, have that horrible, fat flesh on his, pressed up against him...

Minghao nearly threw up everywhere just at the thought. His insides felt wretched. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, Minghao swore inside of his head.

Drink mineral water, green tea, distract yourself so you don't think, and when you work-out listen to music so you meditate and so you don't lose yourself on time and practice, a voice murmured smoothly in the back of his head. Green tea diet...eat ice-cubes if it gets too much. It makes you feel like you're eating something. A voice murmured silkily in his mind.

I'm a man, not some stupid bitch wanting to be like Kate Moss, Minghao thought back to the harsh voice in his head. Just fuck off. Get the fuck off and out of me.

Minghao just wished all of his flesh could fall off of him. And, besides, Junhui liked bones. Minghao swore that Junhui had said that he liked bones. Or had that been a dream?

Minghao didn't know. He couldn't remember. He could barely remember what was happening at school day to day - who was kissing who, cheating on who, fucking who, beating-up who, who was now sitting on the throne...

Minghao smashed his fist into a brick wall on the way home. The pain was sharp and brutal and glorious, and the effort made the breath leave his lungs. No one in the world saw him. It was the dark and old cobble-stoned alley-way behind the factory studios that his Father owned. Coming to see Junhui. Be around Junhui...

Woah. What the fuck was that?

Minghao covered his face with his hands, and looked inside the back door. The Danish back-packer artists and about twelve dozen others were seemingly holding the international dope-smoking championships for that year inside the studios. Minghao called his Father on his phone and told him. He had to hold his phone a foot away from his ear as his Father screamed his head off on the line, and warned Minghao not to go inside and "breathe in all of that filthy, toxic shit which will just fuck with your brain".

Junhui - Minghao wondered if Junhui was inside, smoking all of that marijuana, just sucking it back, fucking up his head, fucking up his body...

Minghao felt vile for no reason at all. His knuckles were scraped and red and bleeding it patches. One of the hipsters walked outside for a breath of air, and was so out of it from the drug-use that he didn't notice Minghao. Minghao was utterly revolted as the hipster dropped down his skinny grey jeans to his ankles with his underpants and began to take a piss up against the brick wall.

"You disgusting fucking prick, put that away!" Minghao seized a very heavy mathematics book from his bag and hit the hipster artist over the head with it. Minghao was revolted at the sight of the hipster's purple, swollen length. Clearly doing other things apart from drugs, oh, fucking, fucking yuck.

The hipster blinked hazily, before he promptly soiled himself. Minghao knew he would never forget that sight of the hideous black stain seeping out across the hipster. Minghao called an ambulance. There was no other thing for it. What if the couple dozen others were...like that?

Minghao's Father screamed for five minutes off two hours. It turned out - thank God - that Junhui hadn't being apart of that crowd, even though the hipsters insisted they were. The hipsters insisted that Junhui had been smoking and playing about with them, but had left about ten minutes before Minghao turned up, but they were well and truly top trumped by two important details; Junhui was still at school with Minghao, but, also, he was doing photographs for the student-teacher meeting forms as a charge by the school princple. 

Minghao's Dad threw a flower vase at the wall, screaming about "filthy krauts trying to implicate kids in their shit". 

Minghao saw Junhui the next day at school. It was Friday. Everyone was tired and grumpy, but happy at the end of the school and working week. Junhui sat beside Minghao....something he never usually did.

"Tell your Dad I'm so, so sorry." Junhui whispered to Minghao a few minutes before the first class of the day - mathematics - started. Minghao, looking down at his textbooks where he had been making notes about the day ahead - and who he wanted to see be castrated without anaesthetic in the city's football stadium - turned his head slightly to the side.

"What's there to be sorry about?"

"How his business and property got fucked up and drugged out and shat in by some gay cunts and some hippies." Junhui answered. Minghao touched Junhui's knee under the table.

"He thinks you're a good young man." Minghao told Junhui, using his Father's words, retracting his hand as quickly as he had put it there on Junhui's knee.

"So good a young man that he'll let you come outside and hang out with me while I go tutu shopping with Jisa?" Junhui quipped, grinning; Jisa was ultimately Junhui's favourite model. 

"What?" Minghao looked at him, frowning slightly. Junhui crossed his arms.

"Oh, it's not like going to Target or something. There's this dressmakers in town and while Jisa's in her knickers in one studio getting figured you and me can have fun in the rooms upstairs. It used to be a hotel in the 20's and 30's but it got bought up by this Belgian couple who have property in America and the UK and Australia - millions and millions and millions of any sort of money you go for. Currency, like." Junhui explained. Minghao felt almost sick with sudden glory, illuminating his being. It was the most blissful, human, pre-empted excitement.

"Really?" Minghao murmured, open, honest.

"Really." Junhui confirmed.  
///  
On the next day, Saturday morning, Minghao caught the train with Junhui and Jisa. He hadn't eaten anything that morning or that much the previous night, and he felt light and something not quite human for it's curious emptiness, though he still felt fulfilled. Jisa was extroadinarily beautiful - even more than usual - and they all attratced stares. How come did these two weird guys who you could tell weren't Korean get the chance to be in the company of that beautiful girl? Junhui and Minghao were sure everyone was thinking. Jisa was blushing under all the attention. She looped her arm with Junhui's and leant her head against his shoulder, Junhui sitting between she and Minghao. A few moments later. Jisa changed her mind and she pushed Junhui over so she was now in the middle between he and Minghao. She cuddled up to Minghao, and, with true natural and shameless male pride, Minghao felt like a Chinese God with such a immacualte specimen of the female race pressed up against him and talking about buying a dress worn by her ballet idol Kang Sue-Jin in the Stuttgurt Ballet's production of "Romeo and Juliet". 

In the dressmakers, Jisa stood up on a white platform while two women with silver hair and black dresses with white aprons and glasses took her measurements, and she made everyone laugh and clap in awe and respect when she went up onto en pointe position one of her toes and then held one arm and leg aloft with the other arm held delicately for balance. "She's so amazing, isn't she?" Junhui happily commented to Minghao, who nodded. He agreed. Of course he agreed.

Junhui took Minghao by his hand and led him up a antique oak staircase to the third storey of the dressmaker's. Minghao's skin was electrified by Junhui's touch, grasping onto him, holding onto him, keeping the two of them connected out of want, and, Minghao entertained, need. They arrived into a hallway with two doors on the left and three on the right. They came to the second door in the middle on the right, and Junhui put his hands over Minghao's eyes, covering them. A hunger pain lurched in Minghao's body, but, God, that was so fucking irrelevant. Minghao could hear a foreign folk song been played downstairs on a vinyl record player the dressmaker's had fitted up in their fitting and making studios. 

"Ta-da." Junhui said softly, pushing open the door. The room that Minghao was met with was stripped and beautiful. It had plain light beechwood floorboards with white-washed walls, slightly grey in tone with age, with three rectangular old-glass windows pushed open, making voile curtains flutter about in the breeze. Stained-glass lamps mounted on the walls were turned on, and a single string of faerie lights was strung around the cornice boards at the top of the sixteen-foot-high ceiling which was a ordinairy dense white with three hanging lights, beautiful original plaster rosaries about them. The room was about thirteen feet wide by thirty foot long. It was magnificent.

"This is my brand new studio with your Dad's been a bit up shit creek without a paddle." Junhui told Minghao, wrapping his arm around Minghao's torso and holding him close, his head resting on Minghao's shoulder and then directly next to his. Minghao glanced down to Junhui's arms wrapped around his waist, and then his breath was stifled in his chest as he felt Junhui's cheek against his.

"How the fuck did you get this, you lying shit?" Minghao said aloud. As Junhui burst out laughing and held Minghao tighter and even impossibly closer to him, Minghao felt the sudden horrific shame of how harsh he just was to Junhui die a extroadinairy death.

"My Nanna's best friend is one of the seamstresses, here." Junhui explained. "I could have had this all along, but I liked you're Dad's set-up. It was all masucline and edgy and cool by the river in the old industrial estate with it's exposed brick and concrete floors and it's floorboards were rough and un-polished - it was fucking awesome."

"You're so lucky to have all of this." Minghao told Junhui. 

"You're so lucky to have you're Dad." Junhui returned, a eyebrow raising slightly in his sincerity with his parted lips. Minghao caught a glimsping sight of the bottom sharp edges of Junhui's front teeth. Minghao was set alight and alive by imaginging them biting his lips and his neck and the skin pulled tight around his hip-bones - the hip-bones that Minghao wanted to jut out so far that they could kill someone. He could feel the ground he was on swaying about him, swaying about them. He wondered if his dizziness was caused by Jisa spinning pirouettes around and around on the dress-fitting platform downstairs....around and around and around...

"Hey, who do you fancy? Me or my Dad?" Minghao spoke before he thought, his high of emotions giving him a stupid sense of thoughtless bravery.

"Who said anything about fancying?" Junhui remarked eloquently.

Minghao was robbed of any response, just looking down to Junhui's arms still around him. Junhui's gaze drank him in deeply and directly. Minghao nearly shuddered out of the most explosive emotional and mental release as, in Junhui's embrace, Junhui's mouth pressed against his, chaste and firm. The touch had Minghao's world blanketed black, and, then, so wonderfully, his mouth was once again electrocuted numb, that stinging, buzzing, pleasurable feeling that he got from Junhui kissing him.

"How about...I won't kiss you because I know you can't handle it and you don't really know how to kiss yet and, instead, we do other things?" Junhui suggested. Minghao felt justly offended.

"Fuck off." He told Junhui, ripping out of his arms. Minghao wished he hadn't left Junhui's embrace a moment later. But, then, with him telling Junhui to fuck off, Junhui would have kicked him out of his embrace anyway.

"What did you just say to me?" Junhui questioned to Minghao. Minghao suddenly felt like like he had hopped the fence into someone's yard, and now their dog was on them. He had really hurt Junhui just then. Shit, he had really done it. Shit. Fuck. Great. Now he was in for it.

It was coming up before Minghao could even realize it. Minghao dived over to one of the open windows, and vomited up his empty guts. Foul, watery bile came up out of his mouth and splattered onto the pavement below, nearly hitting a few passing couples. Minghao quickly dived back inside before they could look up and see him. He shived, sinking down to the floor, feeling revolting...just, so revolting. And sick. Very sick.

Oh, emotional throwing up, Minghao thought, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist as Junhui talked to him and his hand gently patted Minghao's back, soothing him. That's really not good. This is going to far. Even in his thoughts, Minghao suddenly himself didn't even know what he meant. Going to far...trying to fix his fatness - which he had to, needed to - or...whatever it was with Junhui? Was them not being connected as one going too far?

Minghao didn't know what he meant, what anything meant.  
///  
You've got a heart made of stone but Mum's sun is always on your back so you're kept warm, Minghao thought as he gazed up at his laughing Father, sitting in a chair beside his bed. Minghao turned over, and he had been lying in the one position so long - his legs together - that he experienced something he usually only did in the middle of a hot, hot summer. Getting your skin stuck together. Ow.

Junhui sent him a text, asking if he was ok. Minghao wondered what he was doing with Jisa.

Oh no. Not that. Not those thoughts.\par  
Not jealousy.

Oh, shit...he came jealousy.  
///

On Monday morning, back at school, Minghao wanted to kill every single girl at school. They were absolutely obsessed with a new kid at school with sharp, fox-like features and glasses and hair that curled just ever so slightly and naturally at the tips. The new kid's name was Jeon Wonwoo, and, yes, he was very handsome, even Minghao could admit that. But, it was Junhui. It was all Junhui's fault. It was Junhui who had set it off. Junhui, quite frankly, had simply just pounced on Wonwoo the second he saw him.

And Wonwoo took to Junhui like a duck to water. Or, rather, as Minghao got the idea in the canteen hall, he could get a tray and pang both Junhui and Wonwoo about the face with a tray and hit them in the neck with the edge bit, and, so, have the blood indeed flow upon the floorboards.

But someone beat Minghao to it. Of all people, it was the bitch of their grade, the half-Japanese Jangmi Hanajima. She didn't use a tray when she had been taught how to hit by her rough-as-guts martial-arts sportman's Father; when she had started at their high-school, despite her beauty, no one - even in the girls - had gone near her. She was regarded as the devil's daughter. Someone had seen a picture of Jangmi with her Father on her Instagram, and it had gone viral. Her Father was quite scarred with a shaved head and strong, traditional Japanese features on a magnificent body, and in that photo it had showed him with an oxi-tank. Everyone said it was because he got damaged lungs from his fighting career, and, amazingly, everyone believed that bullshit. But Minghao knew better, and possibly was the only other person despite Jangmi.

M. Hanajima had lung cancer.

Minghao thought he'd be one un-glorious bastard too if his Father had lung cancer.

Jangmi got into a punch-up with three other girls due to Junhui making a comment about something...before she turned around and kicked him so hard in the chest that he flew across the canteen and into a table. She stamped on his ribs and crotch, before telling everyone they were a "bunch of cunts".

Minghao didn't even try and interrupt any of it. He just left the canteen hall to sit down behind the science block. A lot of kids smoked there and kissed there and groped there. Chewing gum and cigarette ash littered the ground. Minghao just sat there cross-legged on the bench and breathed in the disgusting city air. If it hadn't been for Jangmi Hanajima doing her nut, he would have eaten something. But he hadn't, thank God he hadn't...

From there, the day got worse, and then the whole week got worse. Wonwoo virtually became Junhui's new best friend/lover, Minghao was completely forgotten, Jangmi Hanajima had been expelled, Jisa was also shut out by Junhui, and Minghao still hadn't lost any weight bar about one-and-a-half-kilograms. How the fuck had he not lost more? Minghao thought sickenly about all the days he had fucked up, been a wuss about sore muscles, ate that mouthful of food...

Minghao cringed, rolling over in his bed in his sleep. He woke up, and glanced blearily and unhappily at the digital clock on his bedside table. It was nine minutes past six 'o' clock in the morning.

Minghao listened to Melanie Martinez through his headphones and he began to work-out, unable to do anything else apart from torture himself with thoughts and get fatter.  
///  
Minghao had no idea really how it happened, but, on Sunday morning, he found himself hanging out with Jangmi Hanajima. They lay on her single bed; it had a white painted wood headboard and base with a white duvet cover with yellow, green and red stripes with white pillowcases and a old jig-saw box filled with CD's, DVD's and tapes on the end of her bed. Minghao and Jangmi had a head-phone in each ear, listening to a song by a Australian band from about 1989 called "Take Me Back To You". The band was called Noiseworks.

"You never hear people sound like that, make music like that with that voice..." Jangmi said.

"Everyone used to say that you looked like Hwasa when you first came to school." Minghao told her. "Then they said you looked like Chunga Ha...then Yves...."\par  
Jangmi frowned, her head turning to the side. "How the fuck?" She said. "Did they just compare me to everyone they stan or some other shit?"

Minghao grinned. "Yeah, I think so." He answered. Jangmi was wearing a black singlet with black cotton coulettes with a draw-string waist. She didn't change her clothes as she grabbed her bicycle from the garage and she told Minghao that they were going down to her "Dad's place". Her parents weren't seperated, so Minghao was confused. He had a while to think; Jangmi's bicycle was a boy's bicycle, a BMX, with a standing bar through the back wheels. Minghao stood on the standing bar and held onto Jangim's shoulders as she rode along, her thin body strong and powerful. This was where her muscle and leaness had come from. Minghao mused that it should be him driving Jangmi along, Jangmi been the passenger, but Minghao knew that he wouldn't be able to manage it. He wasn't fit enough. Minghao felt so ashamed, leaving a girl to do all the work for his fat arse.

They arrived at one of the coolest places Minghao had ever seen, and he was sure that he would not have been able to get into it if it wasn't for Jangmi. It was a snooker games room, cafe, restaurant, and otherwise pub all in one over four stories of 1950's Art-Deco revival architecture. It was absolutely fucking awesome. Along the half-moon shaped windows with writing printed on the glass, Minghao and Jangmi sat in a window seat beside each other on the same south side of the booth. Jangmi had got a coffee, and she had let Minghao have a few sips out of hers. He really didn't want a whole coffee, not being a big fan of it, but a little bit was alright. Minghao was amazed to see that Jangmi wasn't too worried about getting any diseases off him either.

"You like me because I'm a girl raised by the realest man in the world and therefore the only real human being in the world?" Jangmi quipped, his brows coming together slightly, sipping the coffee from the chipped ceramic mug. They had been together for nearly two hours by this point in time.

Roles of gender seemed completely reversed with Jangmi; her legs were spread out wide and apart with one arm thrown over the back of the booth and her waist twisted.

"I fail at being a man every single day and something I wonder if I embarrass my Mum and Dad." Minghao confessed. The corner's of Jangmi's eyes crinkled sympathetically. When he experession went like that, Minghao could see how the kids at school compared her to Chung Ha.

"You're not too bad, hyung, don't you worry yourself." She put the mug down on the table and patted his knee before squeezing it. "Hey, come here, kiss me." Without hesitating, feeling as though something was controlling him, Minghao didn't freak out or move away as Chung Ha's mouth - what? Wait, no, what was he thinking? Jangmi. Jangmi. She was Jangmi, not Chung Ha. Stupid fucking school, stupid fucking kids at school. Jangmi's mouth pressed across his for the most perfect experience. Jangmi's kiss was different to Junhui's. Junhui's hard and male throat rubbed up against Minghao's, and, Junhui was obsessed with his bones. Whereas, Jangmi, she was just...

"And God created woman..." Minghao murmured as she pulled away, his lips sure to bruise black later for how electric and high they and the rest of his body felt then. Jangmi's eyes crinkled up as she laughed. She looked so nice when she laughed.

Fine, you fuck around with Wonwoo, Minghao decided of Junhui. I've got Jangmi. And, hey, maybe I'll get Jisa too to fuck you up.

Little did he know that that thought was a premonition.

Jisa turned up on his front door in the most beautiful clothes. It had been raining, and, throughout the city, it fell in different manners; in one part of the city, it was heavy and thunderous, in other parts, it was light and misty. Jisa had come through the misty rain it seemed. Minghao was transfixed by the beauty of the young woman as he opened to door to find her on the doorstep; she had on light, natural make-up, her mouth the most natural, delicate pink. Every part of her was flawless. The misty rain collected together in minute particles on the top lines of her upper lips, her cheekbones, her eyelashes, and her nose, like a naturalistic high-lighter. It caught in the hair around her temples and her ears and her neck, her pulled tight in it's ballerina bun. She was wearing a light pink tight wrap-waist blouse with a darker pink tulle skirt that went down to mid-calves with her nude-pink ballet tights, her ballet shoes, and a dark grey coat with a black collar, sleeves, and pocket trim with black buttons.

"May I see you?" She asked. She was obviously upset or otherwise troubled in some other manner. Minghao hesitated, only due to his limited experience with young women. But Jisa was different to most of the girls at school. So, what on earth was he supposed to do? He didn't know. With his parents home, he couldn't bring her inside, and, it was raining, so they couldn't go outside - on top of that, his parents would want to know where he was going.

"Can you come around to the back door?" Minghao whispered. "I'm so sorry about this, but...you'll have to jump the side gate." His insides twisted shamefully at the look on Jisa's face descended terribly.

"You utter waste of space and waste of my precious fucking time." She informed him before turninggracefully on her heel and leaving. Minghao was torn, but, if he was going to get his head bittne off by his Father later, well, so be it. Minghao closed the front door quietly and went out after Jisa. He tried to grab her elbow, but she squarely smacked him in the chest. It didn't ache afterwards or wind him, but there was a shock for Minghao in Jisa simply having done that.

"Will you please listen?" She asked of him, her eyes bitter and dark and hard and wet.

"Of course I will." Minghao said.

"How stupid can you be to not see that Junhui is screwing you around while he screws that new friend of his - a Jeon Wonwoo - at the same time he simultaneously tries to be close to me?" Jisa's chest rose and fell abruptly. "I'm not saying he's been cheating - he's too young and so is his penis - to be doing any of that, but, for fuck's sake!" Jisa yelled the last couple of words. Minghao spent a few moments trying to get over Jisa's statement of Junhui couldn't be what she gracefully termed what was simply just a "fuck-boy" because he was too young...and so was his genitals.

"You wanted to come and see me then?" Minghao tried to work out. Jisa shuddered, before completely bursting into tears, her hands covering her face.

Minghao gave a thought to Jangmi, and her maturity, her violence, her brute strength. How she knew better than all else on Earth, and, yet, no one gave her any credit, any belief. She was lonely, all by herself with her slowly dying Father...

Minghao felt sick inside, and, as a result, his eyes became wet also. He eventually understood what Jisa was trying to put across as; she became Junhui's model and lasted as his favourite model because they had a connection. Not something sexual, not something even completely romantic, but, in turn, Junhui would try and come at it romantically, but, because it was something wholesome and sincere, this was why he was in a much more seemingly established relationship with Minghao. But, despite his seemingly established relationship with Minghao, the vanity and the selfishness and the arrogant ignorance that all established artists and creators carried led him to ignoring Minghao who he was supposed to want to chase a new muse, this Jeon Wonwoo. But, in doing that, he was letting down Jisa, without really even giving her a second thought. This distant forgetfulness of her existence - even though not purposely shutting her out like he was Minghao - was the greatest stab to the heart.

And Minghao was still starving himself thin.

For once, they were all along the lines of been typical, common-cultured, useless, tasteless, immature, ignorant, vain, abrupt, and merciless swine. Also known as the world's adolescents. But, here was the girl in her beautiful clothes crying her heart out in the street, and here was the skinny boy...just standing there.

Minghao went to wrap his arms around Jisa, but, instead, just kept them open and distantly inviting to her, so she could make the choice about whether she wanted to step into them or not. Either way, it saved Minghao the rejection of her ooush if he had thought wrong of her predicted choice. Minghao just wanted to lie down; he wished whatever he presumed of any being in Deity form would just let him lie down. But, at the end of the day, any way you looked at it, they were all liars. Everyone lied and cheated about everything. How brutal but simply was human naturalism, eh?

Jisa's arms wrapped around his body and her head rested somewhat perfectly on his thin chest. Minghao had never quite had this experience before, so, it was something that burned him alight and alive inside. How perfect and small yet fragile Jisa's body was. And how hot it was! How warm her skin was - it was impossible. Minghao thought Jisa had to had come down sick from being in the rain. How was it possibly for a human being to be so warm and yet not ill?

Minghao soon realized. It was because she was alive. Out in the street and in the rain, Jisa began to dance, the bitumen tarmac of the rode biting somewhat curelly into her pointe ballet shoes and, then, beneath, her toes. Her coat had stayed on her being in the beginning, but, without her herself actually becoming purposely rid of it, the coat came away to the ground, and grew wet in the rain. Minghao watched Jisa, a spectacle of a woman and not just a woman - a spectacle of nature - that he had never seen before. Minghao knew deep down that he'd most likely never see such a sight again. Something murmured distantly in the back of his head. He knew this. The Lady Of Camellias...

Jisa was the Lady Of Camellias. Or was she Tatiana? Which ballet was this? Minghao had seen Junhui photograh her...the moon queen, the fey queen, the Lady of Camellias...

Minghao realized something else. This was new. This was Jisa's invention. 

She was the Pagan Goddess.

Minghao clapped and smiled; a laugh came from his throat, and it was almost a shock to his ears, how vibrant and bright it was. Jisa, coming down from a pirouette with one leg above her head, sank down to the ground twistedly and gracefully; her tear-stained face and flushed-red mouth broke out in a smile too and she also laughed. It was so absurd, but it was so beautiful. Minghao came and picked Jisa off the ground as though she was a little child, but she stood to her feet as her fingers entwined themselves in the front of his shirt, wiping her face on the front of his shirt, make-up and tears and snot. Minghao didn't mind. Not when she was God.

Of course not when Jisa was God.  
///  
Minghao told his Father he wanted to leave school. His Mother had a fit. She insisted that he had to stay in school and get good grades to get into a good spot in Unversity and get a good job - 

"Bullshit." Minghao's Father dismissed it as. "He does work as it is; the book-keeping, the maitencence, he's always worked in well. What's the point of him going to Unversity, getting over-educated, and then just come back to this point?" He put to his wife. "Minghao can leave school. It's the greatest shit-pool I've ever seen, the school system - universally, I mean. Send your child to school, it becomes a retard..."

Minghao's Mother was upset, but Minghao loved his Father, especially for his words, but especially when the buzz-cut haired man winked at him over a coffee mug that Minghao was sure had a bit of grog in it. 

"Thanks, Dad." Minghao said to him quietly later on. His Dad resolved he'd have a talk with Mum, and he gave Minghao a hug.

"No worries, mate." His Father said.  
///  
Jisa, Jangmi, Junhui and...Wonwoo rang Minghao in precisely that order.

"Junhui's lost his marbles." Jisa frankly remarked when Minghao picked up her tone.

"Jisa, can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"What do you're parents do for a job?"

"My Father is a senior squadron leader for the Air-Force and my Mother is a former dancer with the Stuttgurt Ballet and now she works between the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand on usually classical productions." Jisa answered. "May I ask why?"

"That's why you're different from the rest." Minghao grinned. He could imagine Jisa blushing a very delicate pink on the other end of the line. "Are you in you're studio at home or at the work ones?"

"At home." Jisa answered. "I'm waiting for Mum to skype me on my lap-top, so I'll be quick. Why are you not at school? Junhui is getting himself into a state about not seeing you."

"Yeah, funny that." Minghao answered. Jisa laughed.

"You truly are the devil, dear." Jisa told him.

"You're literally like...waking up to 1936, you know, dead-on it." Minghao said after a few moments silence, hesitation and thoughts on his part, blissful company on Jisa's. "So...Junhui's definitely worried?"

"He's fretting about how he hasn't seen you around - and how long it has been since he has seen you around. He's worried that this means that he's not ever going to see him again, and how you may or may not be moving away, or, otherwise, moving on from him. He's panicing over ringing and texting you're phone - then remembered he somehow doesn't have you're number." Jisa explained.

So he could do something else apart from book-keeping jobs for his Father's business, Minghao got a job at the huge antiques shop of a small, skinny, stooped old man with glasses and flyaway silvery-grey hair. Minghao knew the old man had known his Grandfather when they were still alive, so, technically, it was a bit underhand, but, nevermind.

The old antiques man was the strangest but the most hilarious man Minghao had ever known. Every second word that came from "Antique" - as Minghao nicknamed him apprioately - made the younger man laugh. Antique wanted to build a fifth story extension on the originally 19th Century building. Minghao thought that there was no way in hell of doing it, but, nonetheless, Minghao took the old man to the workplace of a building company in town where he had a shock. Sitting in an area that gave to a television, a few sofas, and a coffee table, was Jangmi and a older man.

"Dad, are you sure?"

"Yes, love, I want this to be for you."

"What's the point of spending all this money if you're going to kick off next week?"

"It makes the house worth more money for you, my love. I don't want you having to chase around matters."

"Dad, come on, think about this -" Jangmi's words broke off as she saw Minghao standing there while Antique - out of line of sight - was talking to the receptionists behind the counter. Her tattooed and scarred Father, who was rugged up in a jumper and a good coat in a wheelchair with his oxi-tank seated in a cage on the back. "Bloody hell, love." Jangmi looked directly at Minghao.

"No, I'm Dad." Her Father corrected her.

"Sorry about that." Minghao took a seat in a opposite-place couch. Jangmi swore a second later, startled, as Antique peered over the reception counter and called Minghao's name. Minghao nearly laughed, but stopped himself. All the while, Jangmi's father burst out laughing. Antique looked scarcely real; with his holey knitted red blazer, white shirt with a yellow collar due to smoking, a red tie, and curiously good black tailored trousers, coupled with his glasses, skinny old features, and flyaway hair, Antique looked like the queerest little creature that had ever lived. Minghao wondered if he was kneeling on a desk, or if he had pushed one of the receptionists over and was standing on her back, like one would a stool.

"Coming to the end are we?" Antique diagnosed, his tone thin and wheedling and old, pink rheumatic knuckles holding onto the edge of the counter.

"Coming from a shit so old that when he farts he farts dust." Jangmi's Father retorted gruffly but good-naturedly. Jangmi and Minghao laughed. All the attention brought out younger tradesmen. Antique insisted Jangmi's Father be served first. Antique - it seemed - chatted up a woman in her mid-sixties, and with Jangmi's Father busy with the young tradesmen who were pushing him to the elevators then to the office of the senior architect in the company, Jangmi and Minghao were left the two teenagers sitting on the couches. Jangmi came to sit beside Minghao.

"I haven't seen you at school."

"Have you been going?"

"Twice this week - Monday, Tuesday - but today - Wednesday - Dad needs me so the over-paid cunts can fuck off." Jangmi leaned back against the couch, crossing her arms and her legs. She was in 90's style denim jeans with brown heeled boots, a black turtleneck, and a black-and-white-wool coat. He hair was held in a ponytail by the base of her skull, and the only make-up she wore was red lipstick, a tiny bit of pencil in her eyebrows, and the French fashion of darkening and high-lighting grey under-eyes. She looked absolutely fantastic. 

"Who are they?" Minghao asked. Jangmi raised an eyebrow, and one side of her mouth turned upwards into a very cruel, degrading smile.

"Fucking school teachers." She told him. Jangmi wasn't mouthing off. Her tone was fluid and cool and graceful with a slight burr to it. Minghao wondered how she did that. Minghao had never heard a woman with a voice deep like Jangmi's was.\par  
"We're not related." Minghao gestured to Antique. "He's my boss."

Jangmi nodded slowly. She leant over, her feet flat on the ground and her elbows on her knees, her hands clasped loosely together, dangling between her knee caps. "Oh, whatcha goanna do?" She hummed softly, before sighing and closing her eyes briefly, tipping her face up towards the ceiling.

///  
"My boy, my boy, come, come! Hurry! Look at this, come and look!"

Minghao was buried up to his hips in very dusty and very old books printed in possibly every other language than either Mandarin or Hangul in a book-room of Antique's when his excitable but age-worn voice called out for him. Minghao climbed the rickety oak staircase to the third floor where he found Antique sitting like a child on the floor with a faint blue tinged marble-like object in his hands. Antique had somehow lowered himself onto the floor with his legs spread out, a doxen or so objects and papers and books about him, with his shoes off and his reading glasses pushed up onto the top of his head. He sat on a very, very dusty Art-Deco rug with a colour-pattern of red, cream, light green, dark blue and black. A 20's era record spung around happily to itself on a gramophone.

"What is that?" Minghao asked, standing by the doorway.

"Oh, it came from Romania in 1937." Antique declared triumphantly. "And for the last seventy-five years, I thought my miserable Father had gotten it rid of us." Antique smiled lovingly down at the blue-tinged marble. "Guess at what this is, Minghao, lad."

Minghao thought. "Was it part of a statue?" He tried.

Antique shook his head. "It's an urn." He told Minghao proudly. Minghao's mouth came open.

"So...someone's been in that since 1837?" He questioned. Antique nodded, a blissful smile on his gummy mouth, his teeth gotten quite sparse due to age. Antique steadfastly held onto the urn as Minghao helped the old man up from the floor.

"Come here, son, I'll explain." Antique wandered out onto the stairwell of the third floor, and promptly sat back down again. Minghao followed him down to the floor. Antique pointed out a tiny hole and filler at the bottom of the urn. "This is what they call Dragon marble. It comes from either East Africa or the Grecian Islands, but, why should it be blue then?" Antique laughed. "It's just the glaze, Minghao. This precious thing briefly spent time in Dresden, and when Dresden was bombed - rightfully so - during the second world war, the urn wasn't destroyed, but, rather, the suffocating mustard gas from the CV-9 bombs that Lancaster's dropped reacted with the chemical coating in the glaze. The glaze is like a sunscreen, but, also, it defends off bomb residue." Antique's eyes slid down to half-lids. "How wonderful is that, son? How very beautiful is that." He chuckled warmly to himself.

"How much is it worth?" Minghao asked.

"Oh, substantial amount." Antique admitted frankly. "That's why I pissed on the old man's gravestone when he got buried because I thought he had sold it, you see."

Minghao burst out laughing, and Antique joined him. Later that day, Antique using a walking stick and his other hand firmly around Minghao's elbow - "I pay you enough for you to have secondry use as a "old-man-prop-me-up"." Antique informed him - they went into the cities oldest modern graveyard where Antique's Father was buried in the 1960's. Minghao would inform honestly to any God that there definitely was one very dirty headstone where Antique's Father was laid to rest. Antique sat down on top of the grass mound and talked to his deceased Father for a few minutes and told him about Minghao, before getting a bit of old rag and some soap before wetting it with a bottle of water. He still chattered on to his sixty years dead parent as he cleaned the headstone, and Minghao stood by, close, but out of the way, observing that life before him, the dead about him, and the world around him.

Minghao knew would be substantially miss Antique when one day he passed away. 

"Love you, Dad." Minghao heard Antique mutter, patting the top of the headstone with pink and grey and tanned yellow rheumatically swollen hands where thin grey hair adorned the backs of his wrists and his hands and arms. 

Minghao was completely over Wen Junhui. 

When he came home that night, however, he found Junhui sitting at his kitchen table with his Father not at home and his Mother pottering about doing her ironing and commenting a few things to Junhui while the evening news broadcast could be heard playing from the television in the sitting room. 

"Junhui." Minghao said as he came in. Junhui startled, and twisted around quickly to look at Minghao.

"Hey." The other young man barely managed.

"Thanks Mum." Minghao smiled at her.

"How was work, love? Oh, too, Dad's got some paperwork for you to run over later. He wants you not to rush, it's not important." She held out her arms, and Junhui grinned to himself as Minghao had no choice but to hug her. "Good." She remarked, kissing Minghao's head, not very much caring that Junhui was there. One's child was one's child.

"Tell you later." Minghao promised. He took Junhui up to his bedroom. It was too cold outside.

"How's your Dad?" Junhui asked. Minghao sat up at the head of the bed, relaxing back against a couple of his sleeping pillow, sitting on top of the duvet. They left the ceiling light off and just kept the lamp on Minghao's bedside table on. Junhui sat to one side of Minghao's bed, further down the bed. He was on top of the duvet too. 

"He's good. He's thinking about doing a renovation of the old studio's; making them into apartments for people to rent, but he says we'd just have the same trouble with hipsters on drugs who don't pay the rent money and everything else, you know..." Minghao rolled his eyes. "So, he's thinking about...we're not really sure."

Junhui nodded. They sat in silence for a few moments. "How are the studios above the dressmakers?" Minghao asked. Junhui smiled tightly.

"Apart from them constantly checking I'm not having sex with anyone up there - so much to the point they've installed a security camera and they like one of my parents to be around along with one of the model's parents as the set happens..." Junhui trailed off as Minghao chuckled.

"Cool." Minghao rested his head back against the pillows, smiling a little bit. 

"What's going on with us? I haven't heard from you." Junhui suddenly put to him abruptly.

"I know." Minghao said simply. "But you've been happy with Wonwoo, though, haven't you?"

Junhui didn't look very alright when Minghao remarked such a thing. His skin seemed boiling, tight and hot and flushed. Minghao looked to Junhui's neck. As Junhui swallowed, Minghao swore he saw a visble heart-beat pulse to the side of Junhui's adam's apple. "You dropped out of school." Junhui stated, looking directly at Minghao. "Why?"

"I'm sick of fake cunts." Minghao replied candidly and deresively. Junhui cast his gaze away, looking to the floor. minghao wondered if he was angry or upset, or, simply just nervous of what was going to happen between the two of them right now. 

"You didn't tell me that you were going to do this." Junhui said, still looking at the ground.

"You didn't stop to think about me once Wonwoo came along." Minghao said. Once upon a time I was obsessed with you, he thought. "And that's okay." Minghao said as Junhui's neck snapped up to look at him. "I know you like Wonwoo and you like his face -"

"No, no, not like that -" Junhui hurriedly said, but Minghao cut him off.

"I'm not saying that. I'm saying that I don't mind, and that I understand, that you wanted his company over mine." Minghao told Junhui levelly.

"You're the one that left!" Junhui snapped. Minghao truly saw now that Junhui was upset, and vulnerable.

"That's the wrong answer." Minghao said simply.

"What?" Junhui answered sharply.

"Ask me why I understand and that I accept." Minghao shifted his position, lying down on the bed, his feet nearly over-hanging the edge, the top of his head just touching the pillows.

Junhui hesitated. "Why do you do that?" He quipped.

"Because I know you." Minghao remarked. Junhui's eyes ran down Minghao's body. One of his hands moved to be on one side of Minghao's hip. Junhui moved a little bit, and Minghao thought that Junhui was going to kiss him, but that wasn't it. Junhui pressed his mouth to a bare patch of skin just before the crew-cut collar of Minghao's black shirt, his warm breath exhaled from his nose going down to Minghao's skin. Minghao closed his eyes and his head fell to one side. After some more time, Junhui straightened up, and as the fog cleared in Minghao's head, his eyes widened nearly imperceptibly at the sight of Junhui peeling his shirt off over his head. Minghao was about to jump in and tell him off, but the sight of bruising on Junhui's side, chest and stomach made Minghao stop.

"Jangmi Hanajima said she wanted a word with me, and, apparently, I deserved this because I'm a "typically ignorant, arrogant, indecent gay cunt"." Junhui remarked. Something distant in Minghao shifted. He had told Jangmi of how he was leaving school, and of things that had been going on with Junhui. For himself, Minghao was ashamed. But when he remembered Jisa, and how upset she was, crying and dancing in the rain, her lipstick smearing on his shirt, Minghao felt the feeling fade. 

Minghao held his hands out, gesturing for Junhui to shift closer to him. Despite the past and the present with Junhui, Minghao wondered if he just could. Just as Jisa and Jangmi weren't Junhui, Junhui wasn't Jisa or Jangmi. Minghao remembered Junhui's mouth on his neck only a few moments ago. Minghao wrapped his thin arms around Junhui, and nearly recoiled a second later from the shock of how warm Junhui's body was. It was like Jisa's. Minghao put that thought, that comparison, out of his mind. Minghao brought Junhui to lay down with him, Junhui half on top of him, half not.

"What did you do with those photographs you took of me?" He asked.

"Still got them on my camera and my laptop." Junhui replied. Minghao felt sick inside.

"Can you delete them?" Minghao questioned.

"Why?"

"Because I want you to." Minghao pressed, readying himself for an argument with Junhui.

"You're beautiful, I'm not going to delete them." Junhui told him frankly.

Absurdly, with Junhui lying with him, those words that came from Junhui's mouth meant the world to Minghao, devestating him quietly.

"I think you should go home." Minghao said, and, a moment later, he regretted it. He was pushing Junhui away as he needed to - he was here, his parents were here, the whole world was here - but, even though he shouldn't want it, he wanted Junhui to stay. 

"Wonwoo's nothing serious." Junhui told him, still pressed against Minghao's body.

"I don't know if I believe that." Minghao said, looking up to the ceiling. 

"You have to."

"Remember to think about me then." One of Minghao's hands hesitantly touched Junhui's hair.

"I rang up Jisa and made an idiot of myself in front of her trying to find out where you were." Minghao heard the bite in Junhui's tone.

"Serves you right." Minghao replied. Things were silent for what seemed like a entire human age.

"Were you jealous?" Junhui asked. 

Minghao responded nearly instantly. "How can I be jealous of someone I've never met?"

"Were you jealous then of me being around someone else?" Junhui tried.

"No. Because I just came to realize that you don't deserve me." Minghao wanted to change his words. That wasn't how he meant it. They weren't the right words.

Junhui changed. He moved up over Minghao's body and pressed his mouth across Minghao's. Despite everything in the last few weeks - even months - it sung so distantly and chaotically and angrily to Minghao how...Junhui and he had never really connected. Minghao had been obsessed with him, wanting him, but, mainly...Minghao burned bitterly, remembering Junhui's words telling him that he wasn't ready for a proper pash. Minghao kissed Junhui back, but he was lost a second later as Junhui didn't stop. Minghao had had no practice at this. Pornography and novella and film's put across as though it was the most simple, naturalistic thing in the world. It really, really fucking wasn't.

And there was the point of Junhui's bare skin as well.

Fuck. Off.  
///  
Minghao was glad he had shoved Junhui off the bed and had hit him over the head with the base of the lamp. Good. Even though Jangmi had roughed him up a bit, Minghao knew he could sleep well knowing that he had gotten back at that single on fundamental fucking arsehole -!

Minghao really wished he could kill something. The matter only really faded at seven minutes to one in the morning according to his clock, when a text came through on his phone.

Hi, Minghao, this is Wonwoo

You are fucking kidding me, Minghao thought, his eyes widening as he sat up in his bed a few minutes after he heard the text chime go off on his phone.

You should come down and see me tomorrow

Minghao texted Wonwoo about why the fuck he should do that.

You obviously really need to, Wonwoo responded.  
///


End file.
